The Fireplace Delusion

Tuesday, December 17th, 2013

Sam Harris stumbled upon an example of secular intransigence that may give readers a sense of how religious people feel when their beliefs are criticized — the fireplace delusion:

Because wood is among the most natural substances on earth, and its use as a fuel is universal, most people imagine that burning wood must be a perfectly benign thing to do. Breathing winter air scented by wood smoke seems utterly unlike puffing on a cigarette or inhaling the exhaust from a passing truck. But this is an illusion.

Here is what we know from a scientific point of view: There is no amount of wood smoke that is good to breathe. It is at least as bad for you as cigarette smoke, and probably much worse. (One study found it to be 30 times more potent a carcinogen.) The smoke from an ordinary wood fire contains hundreds of compounds known to be carcinogenic, mutagenic, teratogenic, and irritating to the respiratory system. Most of the particles generated by burning wood are smaller than one micron—a size believed to be most damaging to our lungs. In fact, these particles are so fine that they can evade our mucociliary defenses and travel directly into the bloodstream, posing a risk to the heart. Particles this size also resist gravitational settling, remaining airborne for weeks at a time.

Once they have exited your chimney, the toxic gases (e.g. benzene) and particles that make up smoke freely pass back into your home and into the homes of others. (Research shows that nearly 70 percent of chimney smoke reenters nearby buildings.) Children who live in homes with active fireplaces or woodstoves, or in areas where wood burning is common, suffer a higher incidence of asthma, cough, bronchitis, nocturnal awakening, and compromised lung function. Among adults, wood burning is associated with more-frequent emergency room visits and hospital admissions for respiratory illness, along with increased mortality from heart attacks. The inhalation of wood smoke, even at relatively low levels, alters pulmonary immune function, leading to a greater susceptibility to colds, flus, and other respiratory infections. All these effects are borne disproportionately by children and the elderly.

The unhappy truth about burning wood has been scientifically established to a moral certainty: That nice, cozy fire in your fireplace is bad for you. It is bad for your children. It is bad for your neighbors and their children. Burning wood is also completely unnecessary, because in the developed world we invariably have better and cleaner alternatives for heating our homes. If you are burning wood in the United States, Europe, Australia, or any other developed nation, you are most likely doing so recreationally—and the persistence of this habit is a major source of air pollution in cities throughout the world. In fact, wood smoke often contributes more harmful particulates to urban air than any other source.

Posted in Science | 6 Comments »

Our Greatest Political Novelist?

Monday, December 16th, 2013

When we call literary writers “political” today, we’re usually talking about identity politics, Tim Kreider notes:

If historians or critics fifty years from now were to read most of our contemporary literary fiction, they might well infer that our main societal problems were issues with our parents, bad relationships, and death. If they were looking for any indication that we were even dimly aware of the burgeoning global conflict between democracy and capitalism, or of the abyssal catastrophe our civilization was just beginning to spill over the brink of, they might need to turn to books that have that embarrassing little Saturn-and-spaceship sticker on the spine. That is, to science fiction.

Science fiction is an inherently political genre, in that any future or alternate history it imagines is a wish about How Things Should Be (even if it’s reflected darkly in a warning about how they might turn out). And How Things Should Be is the central question and struggle of politics. It is also, I’d argue, an inherently liberal genre (its many conservative practitioners notwithstanding), in that it sees the status quo as contingent, a historical accident, whereas conservatism holds it to be inevitable, natural, and therefore just. The meta-premise of all science fiction is that nothing can be taken for granted. That it’s still anybody’s ballgame.

Kreider makes an excellent point about science fiction addressing big political ideas, but he misunderstands conservatism, which does not see the status quo as inevitable. Rather, it sees the status quo — civilization — as fragile. Don’t mess it up! Many of civilization’s less pleasant aspects exist to prevent even worse things from befalling us.

Kreider suggests that Kim Stanley Robinson may be our greatest political novelist:

In his Mars novels, Robinson uses the Red Planet as a historical tabula rasa, a template for creating a saner, more sustainable, and more just human society. What’s most powerful about the Mars books as political novels is that they envision a credible utopia, one that doesn’t — unlike, say, Skinner’s “Walden Two” — rely on a revision of human nature. Robinson’s characters are cynics, opportunists, idealists, narcissists, drug-dependent, manic-depressive, borderline Asperger’s, and emotionally frozen survivors of abuse, but with all their flaws and conflicting agendas they manage to remake their world in more humane and equitable form.

So far, it sounds almost Moldbuggian. But it’s not:

Essentially, Robinson attempts to apply scientific thinking to politics, approaching it less like pure physics, in which one infallible equation / ideology explains and answers everything, than like engineering — a process of what F.D.R. once called “bold, persistent experimentation,” finding out what works and combining successful elements to synthesize something new. He scavenges ideas from the American Constitution, the Swiss confederacy, “the guild socialism of Great Britain, Yugoslavian worker management, Mondragon ownership, Kerala land tenure, and so on” to construct his utopias. The major platform planks these methods lead him to in his books are:

  • common stewardship — not ownership — of the land, water, and air
  • an economic system based on ecological reality
  • divesting central governments of most of their power and diffusing it among local communities
  • the basics of existence, like health care, removed from the cruelties of the free market
  • the application of democratic principles like self-determination and equality in the workplace — which, in practice, means small co-ops instead of vast, hierarchical, exploitative corporations — and,
  • a reverence for the natural world codified into law.

Depending on your own politics, this may sound like millennia-overdue common sense or a bong-fuelled 3 A.M. wish list, but there’s no arguing that to implement it in the real world circa 2013 would be, literally, revolutionary. My own bet would be that either your grandchildren are going to be living by some of these precepts, or else they won’t be living at all.

You could argue that, if I didn’t fundamentally agree with his politics, Robinson’s fiction might seem contrived and didactic to me, the way Ayn Rand’s does if you’re not predisposed toward her brand of enlightened assholism. It’s true he likes to write lectures and speeches, but they’re more engaging than some of Tolstoy’s, who nearly succeeded in stomping my clinging fingers off of “Anna Karenina” with his ruminations on Russian agriculture circa 1870.

Robinson’s Red Mars is one of the few books I looked forward to and then started without finishing, so I share neither Kreider’s politics nor his taste in fiction.

It might be interesting to consider some of the same issues through, say, Heinlein’s eyes. On his anarchist moon colony — in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress — common stewardship of the environment means tossing anyone out the airlock who endangers the colony.  And roughly nothing is codified into law.  If people don’t agree to something, well, that’s that. How’s that for divesting central governments of most of their power and diffusing it among local communities?

On a neo-reactionary colony, stewardship of the land, water, and air would be the duty of the owner of that land, water, and air — the sovereign, probably a corporation — who would have every incentive to maintain its value over the long term, just as a monarch wants to leave his land in good condition for his children and grandchildren. The neo-reactionary point of view, despite its semi-confused reputation for supporting monarchy, also supports subsidiarity, or divesting central governments of most of their power and diffusing it among local communities, just as historical monarchs were rarely totalitarian, and modern mall-management companies rarely try to run shops.

Interestingly, true paleo-reactionaries have pointed to the same cruelties of the free market as Kreider and Robinson and argued that an aristocratic lord protects his peasants, and a plantation-owner protects his slaves, far more than the market protects its free laborers.

(Hat tip to T. Greer.)

Posted in Economics, Media, Policy | 5 Comments »

Who Says Math Has to Be Boring?

Monday, December 16th, 2013

Nine in ten high school grads are not interested in STEM — a career or a college major involving science, technology, engineering or math — according to a survey of more than a million students.

The editors of the New York Times claims this is because the American system of teaching these subjects is broken:

The mathematical sequence has changed little since the Sputnik era: arithmetic, pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and, for only 17 percent of students, calculus. Science is generally limited to the familiar trinity of biology, chemistry, physics and, occasionally, earth science.

That doesn’t seem particularly damning.

These pathways, as one report from the National Academy of Education put it, assume that high school students will continue to study science and math in college. But fewer than 13 percent do, usually the most well-prepared and persistent students, who often come from families where encouragement and enrichment are fundamental. The system is alienating and is leaving behind millions of other students, almost all of whom could benefit from real-world problem solving rather than traditional drills.

Only 11 percent of the jobs in the STEM fields require high-level math, according to Anthony Carnevale, director of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. But the rest still require skills in critical thinking that most high school students aren’t getting in the long march to calculus.

If there’s one thing mediocre math students do not like, it’s solving real-world math problems — also known as word problems. It’s the students who no longer find the simple drills challenging who find the real-world problems invigorating rather than frustrating:

Only 18 percent of American adults can calculate how much a carpet will cost if they know the size of the room and the per-yard price of the carpet, according to a federal survey. One in five American adults lack the basic math skills expected of eighth graders, making them unfit for many newly created jobs. In many cases, that’s because they weren’t exposed to numbers at an early age.

That last sentence strikes me as wishful thinking.

Posted in Education | No Comments »

Camera lucida

Monday, December 16th, 2013

Camera Lucida DiagramI was familiar with the camera obscura, which led to the modern camera, but I was not familiar with the camera lucida:

The name “camera lucida” (Latin for “light chamber”) is obviously intended to recall the much older drawing aid, the camera obscura (Latin for “dark chamber”). There is no optical similarity between the devices. The camera lucida is a light, portable device that does not require special lighting conditions. No image is projected by the camera lucida.

In the simplest form of camera lucida, the artist looks down at the drawing surface through a half-silvered mirror tilted at 45 degrees. This superimposes a direct view of the drawing surface beneath, and a reflected view of a scene horizontally in front of the artist. This design produces an inverted image which is right-left reversed when turned the right way up. Also, light is lost in the imperfect reflection. Wollaston’s design used a prism with four optical faces to produce two successive reflections (see illustration), thus producing an image that is not inverted or reversed.

[...]

In 2001, artist David Hockney’s book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters was met with controversy. His argument, known as the Hockney-Falco thesis, is that great artists of the past, such as Ingres, Van Eyck, and Caravaggio did not work freehand but were guided by optical devices, specifically an arrangement using a concave mirror to project real images. His evidence is based entirely on the characteristics of the paintings themselves.

A couple art professors decided to kickstart their own NeoLucida recently:

(Hat tip to Todd.)

Posted in Media, Technology | No Comments »

Proven Safety Countermeasures

Monday, December 16th, 2013

The Federal Highway Administration lists nine proven safety countermeasures:

Proven Safety Countermeasure 1 RoundaboutsRoundabouts
By converting from a two-way stop control mechanism to a roundabout, a location can experience an 82 percent reduction in severe (injury/fatal) crashes and a 44 percent reduction in overall crashes.

By converting from a signalized intersection to a roundabout, a location can experience a 78 percent reduction in severe (injury/fatal) crashes and a 48 percent reduction in overall crashes.

Proven Safety Countermeasure 2 Corridor Access ManagementCorridor Access Management
Access management refers to the design, implementation, and control of entry and exit points along a roadway. This includes intersections with other roads and driveways that serve adjacent properties. These entry and exit points can be managed by carefully planning their location, complexity, extent (i.e., types of turning movements allowed), and if appropriate, use of medians or other schemes that facilitate or prohibit access to the roadway.

Areas where effective access management has been implemented have experienced a 5-23 percent reduction in all crashes along two-lane rural highways, and a 25-31 percent reduction in severe (injury/fatal) crashes along urban/suburban arterials.

Proven Safety Countermeasure 3 Backplates with Retroreflective BordersBackplates with Retroreflective Borders
A project initiated in 1998 by the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia and the Canadian National Committee on Uniform Traffic Control investigated the effectiveness of applying retroreflective tape around the borders of traffic signal backplates. A small number of signalized intersections were treated and followed up with a simple before/after study, which concluded that the enhancement was effective at reducing crashes. A larger number of sites were subsequently treated and a more robust statistical study was performed.

The use of backplates with retroreflective borders may result in a 15 percent reduction in all crashes at urban, signalized intersections.

Proven Safety Countermeasure 4 Longitudinal Rumble Strips and Stripes on Two-Lane RoadsLongitudinal Rumble Strips and Stripes on Two-Lane Roads
Roadway departure crashes account for approximately 53% of fatal crashes each year on the Nation’s highways. In 2009, 8,780 single-vehicle roadway departure fatalities occurred on two-lane roads. Rumble strips are designed primarily to address the subset of driver error crashes caused by distracted, drowsy, or otherwise inattentive drivers who unintentionally drift from their lane. Since driver error occurs on all roadway systems (including 2 lane roads), rumble strips are most effective when deployed in a systemic application.

Center line rumble strips on rural two-lane roads: 44% reduction of head on fatal and injury crashes.
Center line rumble strips on urban two-lane roads: 64% reduction of head-on fatal and injury crashes.
Shoulder rumble strips on rural two-lane roads: 36% reduction of run-off-road fatal and injury crashes.

Proven Safety Countermeasure 5 Enhanced Delineation and Friction for Horizontal CurvesEnhanced Delineation and Friction for Horizontal Curves
Recent data analysis shows that 28 percent of all fatal crashes occur on horizontal curves. Furthermore, about three times as many crashes occur on curves as on tangential sections of roadways. These statistics make horizontal curves prime sites for safety improvements.

Early driver perception and appropriate reaction to changes in the roadway greatly improve the safety of the curve. Inconsistent use of warning signs has been identified as an important factor contributing to the high incidence of crashes on curves.

Proven Safety Countermeasure 6 Safety EdgeSafety Edge
Vertical pavement edges are a recognized detriment to safety, contributing to severe crashes that frequently involve rollovers or head-on collisions. Studies in some States find that crashes involving edge drop-offs are two to four times more likely to include a fatality than other crashes on similar roads. Providing a flush, unpaved surface adjacent to the pavement resolves the issue temporarily, but the material is often displaced over time, recreating the dangerous drop-offs either continuously or intermittently along the pavement edge. Research in the early 1980s found a 45 degree pavement edge somewhat effective in mitigating the severity of crashes involving pavement edge drop-offs. However, constructing a durable edge was not perfected until the 1990s, and during development it was found that a flatter, 30 degree angle was easier to construct. Additional testing indicated that the 30 degree edge improved the chances of a safe recovery.

Proven Safety Countermeasure 7 Medians and Pedestrian Crossing Islands in Urban and Suburban AreasMedians and Pedestrian Crossing Islands in Urban and Suburban Areas
Midblock locations account for more than 70 percent of pedestrian fatalities. This is where vehicle travel speeds are higher, contributing to the larger injury and fatality rate seen at these locations. More than 80 percent of pedestrians die when hit by vehicles traveling at 40 mph or faster while less than 10 percent die when hit at 20 mph or less. Installing such raised channelization on approaches to multi-lane intersections has been shown to be especially effective. Medians are a particularly important pedestrian safety countermeasure in areas where pedestrians access a transit stop or other clear origins/destinations across from each other. Providing raised medians or pedestrian refuge areas at marked crosswalks has demonstrated a 46 percent reduction in pedestrian crashes. At unmarked crosswalk locations, medians have demonstrated a 39 percent reduction in pedestrian crashes.

Proven Safety Countermeasure 8 Pedestrian Hybrid BeaconPedestrian Hybrid Beacon
The pedestrian hybrid beacon (also known as the High intensity Activated crossWalK (or HAWK)) is a pedestrian-activated warning device located on the roadside or on mast arms over midblock pedestrian crossings. The beacon head consists of two red lenses above a single yellow lens. The beacon head is “dark” until the pedestrian desires to cross the street. At this point, the pedestrian will push an easy to reach button that activates the beacon. After displaying brief flashing and steady yellow intervals, the device displays a steady red indication to drivers and a “WALK” indication to pedestrians, allowing them to cross a major roadway while traffic is stopped. After the pedestrian phase ends, the “WALK” indication changes to a flashing orange hand to notify pedestrians that their clearance time is ending. The hybrid beacon displays alternating flashing red lights to drivers while pedestrians finish their crossings before once again going dark at the conclusion of the cycle.

Installation of the pedestrian hybrid beacon has been shown to provide the following safety benefits: up to a 69 percent reduction in pedestrian crashes and up to a 29 percent reduction in total roadway crashes.

Proven Safety Countermeasure 9 Road DietRoad Diet
The classic roadway reconfiguration, commonly referred to as a “road diet,” involves converting an undivided four lane roadway into three lanes made up of two through lanes and a center two-way left turn lane. The reduction of lanes allows the roadway to be reallocated for other uses such as bike lanes, pedestrian crossing islands, and/or parking. Road diets have multiple safety and operational benefits for vehicles as well as pedestrians, such as:

  • Decreasing vehicle travel lanes for pedestrians to cross, therefore reducing the multiple-threat crash (when one vehicle stops for a pedestrian in a travel lane on a multi-lane road, but the motorist in the next lane does not, resulting in a crash) for pedestrians,
  • Providing room for a pedestrian crossing island,
  • Improving safety for bicyclists when bike lanes are added (such lanes also create a buffer space between pedestrians and vehicles),
  • Providing the opportunity for on-street parking (also a buffer between pedestrians and vehicles),
  • Reducing rear-end and side-swipe crashes, and
  • Improving speed limit compliance and decreasing crash severity when crashes do occur.

Posted in Urbanism | 4 Comments »

Mike Rowe on the High Cost of College

Sunday, December 15th, 2013

“If we are lending money that ostensibly we don’t have to kids who have no hope of making it back in order to train them for jobs that clearly don’t exist, I might suggest that we’ve gone around the bend a little bit,” says TV personality Mike Rowe, best known as the longtime host of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs.

Work smart and hard, Mike Rowe suggests:

Rowe says much the same thing in his recent Popular Mechanics piece (which T. Greer pointed me toward).

Posted in Business, Education | 1 Comment »

Bad Guys Have Experience

Sunday, December 15th, 2013

Bad guys have experience, gun nut Tim notes:

One of the dirty little secrets of our criminal justice system is that bad guys only get hassled by the police on a relatively small percentage of their criminal acts. In Ohio recently the Attorney General Mike DeWine commissioned a study finding, among other things, that solid charges against bad guys often never reach a courtroom for disposition.

[...]

The same Ohio study found that less than 1% of Ohio’s population had been convicted of three violent felonies, but that small group of people (significantly less than 1% of the population) was responsible for more than a third of all violent crime convictions. Note those are just the convictions and don’t factor in reduced charges or crimes that were never solved due to lack of evidence, and it only accounts for the bad guys who caught three felony convictions.

[...]

If there’s a dude pointing a gun at you, it’s a fair bet that you aren’t his first victim. He has more experience with violence than you do, and as a serial transgressor against society’s rules he knows very well how to use those rules against you. You’ve been raised all your life to be polite and not judge people based on appearance. He knows this. That’s why he’s not going to approach you like a rabid junkyard dog from 50 yards away. He’s going to look normal or at least normal enough that your civilized brain which has been taught a bunch of claptrap about not judging others is going to overrule that primeval instinct in your brain that gives you a vague sense of discomfort and nervousness as he approaches. He knows you’ll probably be indecisive enough to let him get close, and once he’s close that’s when he’s going to stick the gun in your face.

Posted in Crime | 3 Comments »

Binge Viewing is Real

Saturday, December 14th, 2013

Binge viewing is real, Netflix confirms:

Netflix only examined users who finished a season within the space of a month. For one serialized drama, 25% of the viewers finished the entire 13-episode season in two days, while it took 48% of them one week to do so. The pace was pretty much the same for a very different kind of show—a sitcom with a 22-episode season: 16% of viewers finished the season in the equivalent of a weekend, while 48% completed it within one week.

That pattern—especially the apparent sweet spot of polishing off one season in a week—was similar across various styles of shows in the sample, including those with audiences that skew male or female, younger or older.

Another finding: The majority of those viewers only immersed themselves in one show at a time, rather than juggle several at once. And whether they’re plowing through three episodes in a stretch or 13, TV watchers identify themselves as bingers.

Posted in Business, Media | No Comments »

Miyazaki’s Pippi Longstocking Concept Art

Saturday, December 14th, 2013

In 1971, Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata were unable to secure Astrid Lindgren’s permission to adapt her Pippi Longstocking books — but they did produce some wonderful concept art:

Pippi Longstocking by Miyazaki 03

Posted in Media | 1 Comment »

Deltaprintr

Friday, December 13th, 2013

The simple, affordable Deltaprintr uses polar coordinates rather than Cartesian:

Posted in Technology | 3 Comments »

Drunks More Likely to Survive Injuries

Friday, December 13th, 2013

God really does look after drunks, it would appear:

Friedman analyzed all 190,612 patients treated at Illinois’ trauma centers between 1995 and 2009 who were tested for blood-alcohol content, with levels ranging from zero to 0.5 percent at time of admission. (Blood-alcohol levels above about 0.35 percent can be fatal.) He found that with the exception of burn injuries, the mortality rates of all types of traumatic injury decreased as the blood-alcohol content of victims rose. [7 Ways Alcohol Affects Your Health]

At the upper bounds of intoxication, mortality rates were cut by nearly 50 percent, said Friedman. The effect, however, was not equally strong for all types of trauma, with victims of penetrating injuries, such as gunshot and stab wounds, seeming to show the greatest benefit from alcohol.

Folk beliefs about this aren’t quite right:

There is a folk belief that drunken injuries, especially those incurred during car crashes, are likely to be less severe, due perhaps to increased relaxation or limpness at the time of an accident. But Friedman says his research has convinced him that this belief is “probably grossly overestimated and false.”

His findings don’t show that a drunk driver’s injuries during a car crash are likely to be less serious than those suffered by potential sober victims, just that if all parties suffer the same injuries, the sober ones are more likely to die.

“You don’t die from the injury itself, you die from the subsequent physiological response, things like inflammation and rapid fluid loss,” Friedman told Life’s Little Mysteries. “If you get shot by a gun, it’s not the hole that kills you.”

And it’s when a person’s body goes into emergency preservation mode — tripping a cascade of physiological panic buttons that can ironically end in death — that alcohol seems to help most.

Posted in Science | 2 Comments »

Noise and Learning

Friday, December 13th, 2013

Noises can impede learning — and research corroborates common sense:

Numerous studies over the past 15 years have found that children attending schools under the flight paths of large airports lag behind in their exam results.

But general noise seems to have an effect too. Bridget Shield, a professor of acoustics at London South Bank University, and Julie Dockrell, now at the Institute of Education, have been conducting studies and advising politicians on the effects of all sorts of noises, such as traffic and sirens, as well as noise generated by the children themselves. When they recreated those particular sounds in an experimental setting whilst children completed various cognitive tasks, they found a significant negative effect on exam scores. “Everything points to a detrimental impact of the noise on children’s performance, in numeracy, in literacy, and in spelling,” says Shield. The noise seemed to have an especially detrimental effect on children with special needs. `

Shield says the sound of “babble” — the chatter of other children, is particularly distracting in the classroom. Architects that fashion open-plan classrooms in schools would do well to take this on board. “People are very distracted by speech — particularly if it’s understandable, but you’re not involved in it.” This phenomenon is also known as the irrelevant speech effect, she says, adding that “it’s a very common finding in open-plan offices as well.”

Whether background sounds are beneficial or not seems to depend on what kind of noise it is — and the volume. In a series of studies published last year, Ravi Mehta from the College of Business at Illinois and colleagues tested people’s creativity while exposed to a soundtrack made up of background noises — such as coffee-shop chatter and construction-site drilling — at different volumes. They found that people were more creative when the background noises were played at a medium level than when volume was low. Loud background noise, however, damaged their creativity.

This makes sense for a couple of reasons, says psychologist Dr Nick Perham, at Cardiff Metropolitan University in the UK, who studies the effect of sounds on learning but was not involved in the study. Firstly, he says, sounds that are most distracting tend to be very variable. A general hum in the background suggests a steady-state sound with not much acoustical variation. “So there’s not much there to capture your attention — nothing distracting the subjects,” he says. At the same time, the background noise might cause the subjects to be in a slightly heightened state of arousal, says Perham. You don’t want too much or too little arousal. “Medium arousal is best for good performance. So it might be that a general hum in the background gives an optimum level of arousal.” With that in mind, Perham suggests there may be some benefit to playing music or other sounds in an art class or other situations where creativity is key.

Many teachers all over the world already play music to students in class. Many are inspired by the belief that hearing music can boost IQ in subsequent tasks, the so-called Mozart effect. While the evidence actually suggests it’s a stretch to say classical music boosts brainpower, researchers do think pleasant sounds before a task can sometimes lift your mood and help you perform well, says Perham, who has done his own studies on the phenomenon. The key appears to be that you enjoy what you’re hearing. “If you like the music or you like the sound — even listening to a Stephen King novel — then you did better. It didn’t matter about the music,” he says.

However, it’s worth considering that music is not always helpful while you’re trying to work. Trying to perform a task which involves serial recall — for instance, doing mental arithmetic — will be impaired by sounds with acoustic variation, which includes most types of music, says Perham. (Except a few, like extreme death metal.) Songs with lyrics, on the other hand, are more likely to interfere with tasks that involve semantics — such as reading comprehension. “The task and the sound are important, when you have both of them using the same process then you get problems,” he says.

Posted in Education, Science | No Comments »

How to Green Your Firing Range

Thursday, December 12th, 2013

Firing ranges become polluted with lead and copper, but a cheap new remedy may solve the problem:

Now, Korean scientists have created a natural mixture that sops up nearly all the metals: pulverized oyster shells and fly ash, the sooty particles spewed by combustion. Landfills in Korea accumulate more than 250,000 tons of oyster shells each year, while coal-fired power plants churn out just as much fly ash. Combining the two waste products creates a concoction rich in minerals that shackle metal ions within tight molecular bonds, the team reports this month in Environmental Geochemistry and Health. By mixing different ratios of the ingredients with grossly contaminated firing-range soil—holding nearly seven times the amount of lead deemed dangerous by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency—the researchers identified a unique blend that locked up 98% of leachable lead contamination and 96% of the copper. Other soil-scouring techniques exist, but the shells-and-ashes approach is far cheaper and more sustainable, the scientists claim.

Posted in Science, Technology, Weapons | No Comments »

The Awesome Shop

Thursday, December 12th, 2013

Target is experimenting with a Pinterest-powered online storefront, dubbed the “Awesome Shop”, that its RAD (Rapid Accelerated Development) group threw together in a few weeks.

Posted in Business, Technology | No Comments »

Mississippi Slave Narratives

Thursday, December 12th, 2013

I don’t know how many Americans have read any slave narratives, but John Derbyshire recently pointed me toward an Adams County, Mississippi slave narrative, from 100-year-old Charlie Davenport:

I was named Charlie Davenport an’ encordin’(according) to de way I figgers I ought to be nearly a hund’ed years old. Nobody knows my birthday, ’cause all my white folks is gone.

[...]

Aventine, where I was born an’ bred, was acrost Secon’ Creek. It was a big plantation wid ’bout a hund’ed head o’ folks a-livin’ on it. It was only one o’ de marster’s places, ’cause he was one o’ de riches’ an’ highes’ quality gent’men in de whole country. I’s tellin’ you de trufe, us didn’ b’long to no white trash. De marster was de Honorable Mister Gabriel Shields hisse’f. Ever’body knowed ’bout him. He married a Surget.

Dem Surgets was pretty devilish; for all dey was de riches’ fam’ly in de lan’. Dey was de out-fightin’es’, out-cussin’es’, fastes’ ridin’, hardes’ drinkin’, out-spendin’es’ folks I ever seen. But Lawd! Lawd! Dey was gent’men even in dey cups. De ladies was beautiful wid big black eyes an’ sof’ white han’s, but dey was high strung, too.

Southern slaves ate surprisingly well:

Us slaves was fed good plain grub. ‘Fore us went to de fiel’ us had a big braskfas’ o’ hot bread, ‘lasses, fried salt meat dipped in corn meal, an’ fried taters. Sometimes us had fish an’ rabbit meat. When us was in de fiel’, two women ‘ud come at dinner-time wid basket’s filled wid hot pone, baked taters, corn roasted in de shucks, onion, fried squash, an’ b’iled pork. Sometimes dey brought buckets o’ cold butter-milk. It sho’ was good to a hongry man. At supper-time us had hoecake an’ cold vi’tals. Sometimes dey was sweetmilk an’ collards.

Mos’ ever’ slave had his own little garden patch an’ was ‘lowed to cook out o’ it.

Mos’ ever plantation kep’ a man busy huntin’ an’ fishin’ all de time. (If dey shot a big buck, us had deer meat roasted on a spit.)

On Sundays us always had meat pie or fish or fresh game an’ roasted taters an’ coffee. On Chris’mus de marster ‘ud give us chicken an’ barrels o’ apples an’ oranges. ‘Course, ever’ marster warnt as free handed as our’n was. (He was sho’ ‘nough quality.) I’se hear’d dat a heap o’ cullud people never had nothin’ good t’eat.

I find his take on the Civil War fascinating:

De marster’s some went to war. De one what us loved bes’ never come back no more. Us mourned him a-plenty, ’cause he was so jolly an’ happy-lak, an’ free wid his change. Us all felt cheered when he come ‘roun’.

Us Niggers didn’ know nothin’ ’bout what was gwine on in de outside worl’. All us knowed was dat a war was bein’ fit. Pussonally, I b’lieve in what Marse Jefferson Davis done. He done de only thing a gent’man could a-done. He tol’ Marse Abe Lincoln to ‘tend to his own bus’ness an’ he’d ‘tend to his’n. But Marse Lincoln was a fightin’ man an’ he come down here an’ tried to run other folks’ plantations. Dat made Marse Davis so all fired mad dat he spit hard ‘twixt his teeth an’ say, ‘I’ll whip de socks off den dam Yankees.’

Dat’s how it all come ’bout.

My white folks los’ money, cattle, slaves, an’ cotton in de war, but dey was till better off dan mos’ folks.

Lak all de fool Niggers o’ dat time I was right smart bit by de freedom bug for awhile. It sounded pow’ful nice to be tol’:

“You don’t have to chop cotton no more. You can th’ow dat hoe down an’ go fishin’ whensoever de notion strikes you. An’ you can roam ‘roun’ at night an’ court gals jus’ as late as you please.”

Aint no marster gwine a-say to you, “Charlie, you’s got to be back when de clock strikes nine.”

I was fool ‘nough to b’lieve all dat kin’ o’ stuff. But to tell de hones’ truf, mos’ o’ us didn’ know ourse’fs no better off. Freedom meant us could leave where us’d been born an’ bred, but it meant, too, dat us had to scratch for us ownse’fs. Dem what lef’ de old plantation seamed so all fired glad to git back dat I made up my min’ to stay put. I stayed right wid my white folks as long as I could.

My white folks talked plain to me. Dey say real sad-lak, ‘Charlie, you’s been a dependence, but now you can go if you is so desirous. But if you wants to stay wid us you can share-crop. Dey’s a house for you an’ wood to keep you warm an’ a mule to work. We aint got much cash, but dey’s de lan’ an’ you can count on havin’ plenty o’ vit’als. Do jus’ as you please.’ When I looked at my marster an’ knowed he needed me, I pleased to stay. My marster never forced me to do nary thing ’bout it. Didn’ nobody make me work after de war, but dem Yankees sho’ made my daddy work. Dey put a pick in his han’ stid o’ a gun. Dey made ‘im dig a big ditch in front o’ Vicksburg. He worked a heap harder for his Uncle Sam dan he’d ever done for de marster.

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